Joe Balestrino is an SEO consultant, founding partner of www.mr-seo.com and hosts the weekly Mr-SEO podcast on iTunes, a free resource for teaching the basics of SEO to beginners.

Advice on Meta Tags

Sometimes meta tags can make the difference between a good ranking and a great ranking. One thing to keep in mind is that when tweaking tags for improvement, it’s wise to change only the title, keyword or description tag, not all three. This will help you figure out what has a positive or negative effect. In regard to keyword tags, adding more doesn’t equate with better rankings. Too many instances can make the tag look spammy to the engines. Below are instructions for setting up the three primary meta tags.

Keyword Tags: the keyword tag needs to reflect keywords for the page only, not the entire site. As a general rule, don’t repeat any keyword or phrase more than 3 times. Example <meta name="keywords" content=" Nike, Nike Shoes, Nike sneakers"> For keywords and phrases with singular and plural options, one of each is enough. Tags that read Blue Nikes, Red Nikes, Black Nikes, Green Nikes and so on should be avoided. Instead label the tag as so…Blue, Red, Black, Green, Nike, Nikes. Remember that if you don’t have a particular product or service offered on the page, the associated keywords shouldn’t be there. Tip: Place any common misspellings of keywords in this tag as well.

Title Tags: Probably the most important tag there is, the title tag can move a ranking up several spots in some cases with minor adjustment. Each page should be optimized for a particular phrase or phrases. If you optimized a page for Discount Nike Sneakers, your title tag should read

Discount Nike Sneakers – Company Name. The keyphrase must come first and the company name last. The sooner the keyphrase is found, the better. You can always experiment with the title tag for maximum effectiveness. You could try Discount Nike Sneakers on Sale, Discount Nike Sneakers | Nike Sneaker, etc… The possibilities are endless.

Description Tags: The description tag helps supports the title tag and the content on the page, however, this tag has a little more importance than most people are aware of. Let’s go back to our example about the Blue Nike sneakers and assume your page content talks about Blue Nike Sneakers and your title tags and H1 tag also support the content. If that’s the case, the term “Blue Nike Sneaker” needs to be in the description tag. But here is the kicker: If possible, start the description tag off with your phrase or at least have it in the first sentence. This is very important, as is making sure your description tag is informative and sells the page. People will be reading these descriptions. If you don’t use a description tag the engines will pull content off the page, likely taking your phrase out of context or worse, off of your menu. The description tag is your opportunity to control what your traffic will see while supporting your other meta data. You can steal traffic from higher ranking sites with a well written tag.

A word about supplemental results: Avoid at all costs using the same title and description tags, even in the early stages of the site. Having all the tags the same could place pages into the supplemental, where they might remain for months, slowing SEO efforts to a crawl.

Thanks Joe B. for the insightful post! Make sure you check out MR. SEOs website and his informative podcasts.

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